Natasha Lomas
Writer
The Latest from Natasha Lomas
Google fined €1.49BN in Europe for antitrust violations in search ad brokering
The European Commission has just announced another antitrust fine for Google. The latest fine — €1.49BN (~$1.7BN) — relates to its search ad brokering business, which involves Google sel
Ahead of third antitrust ruling, Google announces fresh tweaks to Android in Europe
Google is widely expected to be handed a third antitrust fine in Europe this week, with reports suggesting the European Commission’s decision in its long-running investigation of AdSense could l
Snap is under NDA with UK Home Office discussing how to centralize age checks online
Snap is under NDA with the UK’s Home Office as part of a working group tasked with coming up with more robust age verification technology that’s able to robustly identify children online.
Xiaomi outs Redmi Go, a $65 entry-level smartphone for India
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has announced a new entry level smartphone at an event in Delhi. The entry-level smartphone is targeted at the Indian market and looks intended to woo feature phone own
EU gov’t and public health sites are lousy with adtech, study finds
A study of tracking cookies running on government and public sector health websites in the European Union has found commercial adtech to be operating pervasively even in what should be core not-for-pr
U.S. federal court jury finds Apple infringed three Qualcomm patents
Mobile chipmaker Qualcomm has chalked up another small legal victory against Apple in another patent litigation suit. A jury in a U.S. federal court in San Diego found Friday that Apple owes Qualcomm
Passbase is building a full-stack identity engine with privacy baked in
Digital identity startup Passbase has bagged $600,000 in pre-seed funding led by a group of business angel investors from Alphabet, Stanford, Kleiner Perkins and EY, as well as seed fund investment fr
UK asks competition watchdog to put adtech market review top of its to-do list
The U.K. government has written to the country’s competition authority to ask the watchdog to respond to concerns about the lack of transparency in the digital advertising market and carry out a
Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage
Messaging platform Telegram claims to have had a surge in signups during a period of downtime for Facebook’s rival messaging services. In a message sent to his Telegram channel, founder Pavel Du
Google has quietly added DuckDuckGo as a search engine option for Chrome users in ~60 markets
In an update to the chromium engine, which underpins Google’s popular Chrome browser, the search giant has quietly updated the lists of default search engines it offers per market — expand
Competition policy must change to help startups fight ‘winner takes all’ platforms, says UK report
A independent report commissioned by the UK government to examine how competition policy needs to adapt itself for the digital age has concluded that tech giants don’t face adequate competition
Marking 30 years of the web, Tim Berners-Lee calls for a joint fight against disinformation
The inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has published an open letter to mark the 30th anniversary of the day — March 12, 1989 — when he submitted his original proposal for
Online platforms need a super regulator and public interest tests for mergers, says UK parliament report
The latest policy recommendations for regulating powerful Internet platforms comes from a U.K. House of Lord committee that’s calling for an overarching digital regulator to be set up to plug ga
Don’t break up big tech — regulate data access, says EU antitrust chief
Breaking up tech giants should be a measure of last resort, the European Union’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has suggested. “To break up a company, to break up private pr
The other smartphone business
With the smartphone operating system market sewn up by Google’s Android platform, which has a close to 90% share globally, leaving Apple’s iOS a slender (but lucrative) premium top-slice,
Uber pays $2.6M to settle historical charges it violated Dutch taxi laws
Another fine for Uber’s historical playbook: The ride-hailing giant has agreed to pay around $2.6 million (€2.3 million) to settle charges in the Netherlands related to violations of local tax
Cookie walls don’t comply with GDPR, says Dutch DPA
Cookie walls that demand a website visitor agrees to their internet browsing being tracked for ad-targeting as the “price” of entry to the site are not compliant with European data protect
YouTube under pressure to ban UK far-right activist after live-streamed intimidation
The continued presence of a U.K. far-right activist on YouTube’s platform has been raised by the deputy leader of the official opposition during ministerial questions in the House of Commons tod
Cabify returns to Barcelona with a workaround for ride-hailing wait limits
Well that didn’t take long. Despite warning loudly and publicly that incoming changes to private-hire vehicle (VTC) rules in Catalonia would drive it out of Barcelona for good, and force it to f
Facebook refuses to disclose ‘chuck Chequers’ Brexit advertiser to UK parliament
Facebook has refused to provide the British parliament with the names of individuals behind a shadowy network backing an extreme ‘no deal’ Brexit outcome over a government-negotiated compr